Abstract
In recent editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, personality disorders (PDs) have been conceptualized as reflecting impairments in four areas: cognition, affectivity, interpersonal functioning, and impulse control. However, there have been no systematic surveys of PD symptoms to assess the degree to which these four domains of impairment are actually represented in the DSM-IV/DSM-5 PD symptom criteria. Results of such a survey indicated that the most common domain of impairment for DSM-IV/DSM-5 PDs is interpersonal functioning (41% of all PD symptoms), followed by cognition (30%), and affectivity (18%), with relatively few PD symptoms reflecting difficulties in impulse control (6%). Comparison of the proportions of symptoms in different impairment domains in DSM-III, DSM-III-R, and DSM-IV/DSM-5 confirmed that these symptom distributions have been stable across revisions of the diagnostic manual. Implications of these results for the conceptualization of PDs in DSM-5.1 and beyond are discussed.